


Altitude Sickness / The Dance

by henghost



Category: ITZY (Band)
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Loss of Virginity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:01:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25460584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/henghost/pseuds/henghost
Summary: The five are forced into going on a mountain retreat. Yeji has been there before.
Relationships: Choi Jisu | Lia/Hwang Yeji
Kudos: 34





	Altitude Sickness / The Dance

**Author's Note:**

> Writing about them more to kill the time until the Comeback, which is supposed to be soon, right?

By the time they reach the cabin they’re all gasping. The air up there is thin. You feel it in your chest. And it’s that part of the year where the sun feels as though it’s right there, just above your head, so they’re dripping with sweat as well, and there isn’t any breeze to wick it away.

A further tragedy when they get inside: no AC. The place looks like it was built well before the war. A high wooden ceiling with log beams to support it, furniture straight out of a fantasy novel. The fridge looks like it would suffocate you if you got trapped inside.

Then the van they arrived in drives away. Now there’s no way out.

Yeji looks through all the doors and says to them, “Four beds, two rooms. Someone will have to sleep on the floor.” Yuna raises her hand emphatically and grins. So it’s settled — the eldest in one room, younger in the other, and Yuna out here on the front room’s carpet like a family cat. The arrangement suits Jisu just fine. At least Yeji is quiet. At least she doesn’t snore.

#

_ So you want to debut at the beginning of next year? Well, I admire your ambition, but I’m not sure you all are quite at that level yet. In my own humble estimation, which happens to be the only estimation that matters. You’ve got some talent, sure, but that isn’t enough. Not nearly enough. _

_ But if you’re eager, well, there is one option. The Company owns a cabin out in Sokcho, nestled into the Seoraksan Mountain Range. Sometimes we send a group of bright-eyed kids like yourselves up there. We find the altitude has an almost adhesive quality: it’ll bind the five of you together like sedimentary rocks. Plus, compared to Seoul, it’s a very low-pressure atmosphere — literally! Ha ha ha. There’ll be food and water waiting.  _

_ We won’t let you come down until you aren’t amateurs anymore. _

#

There isn’t any cell-service, of course, but there’s a boxy TV from the previous century and a stack of VHS tapes. So after a dinner of beans and rice heated by a propane stove they sit on the floor and fiddle with the box and put on  _ Clueless _ , which gives Jisu a pang of melancholy. Nostalgia for something she never had. 

When it’s over she says, “I’m hot and miserable.”

Chaeryeong says, “It’s not so bad. I like it here. It’s got a vintage charm.”

Ryujin says, “Okay, grandma,” and they laugh. 

And it’s been a long day so they decide on an early night, retire to their respective rooms. In Yeji and Jisu’s room are two square white cots against opposite walls. It’s like a sauna in there, and the only window won’t budge.

“Well this is a problem,” says Yeji. “I sleep naked, and it’s too hot to be under the covers. You don’t mind, do you?”

“Um,” says Jisu, but Yeji has already begun to strip, peel off her thin clothes that are dark with sweat. 

Her fingers are at the strap of her bra when she turns to see Jisu’s expression, and she stops and says, “Compromise: just underwear.”

“Sounds good,” says Jisu, whose face burns. She doesn’t remove any clothing herself, collapses onto the hard cot in her running shorts. It’s dark enough now she can’t see across the room to Yeji’s bed. The only thing she can see is a mist of navy blue, and she wonders how long it will take to be able to breathe up here.

“ _ Clueless  _ made me depressed,” says Jisu to the air.

“Because you’ll never be Alicia Silverstone?” says Yeji.

“Well, that, and … I don’t know. It was so high-contrast. I don’t know. I’m exhausted.”

And she closes her eyes and is asleep before she can hear the answer. In her dream she’s back in her old high school, which she only attended for a year. She looks in her locker’s mirror and sees another her, dressed in a pressed uniform, a pleated skirt. Her heart races, her hands sweat. Is it a big test? A mile in PE? No, none of those — The Dance is coming up, and no one’s asked her yet. Someone taps her on the shoulder, and she wonders, Will this be it…?

Her eyes snap open.

The room is still dark. A buttermilk moon peers in through the glass, and by the light she can see the other side of the room. She can see that Yeji’s bed is empty. She gets to her feet — yes, definitely empty, and creeping out of the room she sees that the sole bathroom is also empty. 

Down the hallway, though, the front door is swinging against the faintest wind. Jisu tiptoes through the cabin, passing Yuna, who is curled feline on her assigned carpet and snoring, and out the door, out into the chilly — but not as chilly as it should be — mountain air. The dusty earth is cool against her bare feet. 

And there are footprints leading out into the trees. They’re so tiny they must belong to Yeji, and so she follows them. Into and through the lush green. Something crystal hangs in the air, something magic. No exhaustion now.

Behind the bank of trees there’s a patchy path which swoops around a boulder and into further darkness. Soon she hears what sounds like running water, and the trail makes its final turn and there she is: a miniature waterfall trickles into a pool made creamy by the moon, and in the center is Yeji, her pale face turned up to face the stars.

“Yeji!”

She startles, then smiles. “Jisu, come down here. It’s nice and cold.” Yeji glides through the water until her head is under the waterfall, and she shivers and howls.

Jisu steps cautiously down the incline and over to the side of the pool, where she sees Yeji’s crumpled black bra and panties in the dirt. 

“You’re naked,” says Jisu.

“Way too hot in that room.”

“How’d you know this was here?”

“I’ve been here before. There was this camp for girls I went to when I was younger, and we came to this same place. My friends and I came down here when we were supposed to be sleeping. Come on, Jisu. Get in with me.”

Jisu holds her arms and looks at dark ground, and Yeji splashes water in her direction. It’s so hot, even this late at night, it’s scorching, and Jisu feels this urge in the back of her neck, the urge to be totally free of covering, and she pulls all her clothing off as quick as she can and without letting herself reconsider plunges into the icy pond. The cold shoots up her nerve-endings like electricity, and she is alive, so alive. Yeji cackles witchlike in the blackness.

“I didn’t think you would,” she says.

“Way too hot in that room,” says Jisu, and she swims breaststroke, lowers her head under the heavy trickle of falling water, and squeals. It feels as though there isn’t any ground beneath them, like the blue will go down down down forever.

She does a few laps around the rim then puts her arms on a jutting rock to hold herself up, and Yeji does the same. The white light glances off her sable eyes. They’re so close now. So close. Not to mention nude. But the tightness in Jisu’s ribs is gone entirely. She’s floating.

“We’re so far away from everyone,” she says. “Not just from the others, but from everyone.”

“It’s been like that for a while, now,” says Yeji.

“Maybe that’s why the movie made me so sad. I was only at high school — a real high school — for a year. But then I was different. Then I was away from everyone else.”

“Is that really what you want? To be in some American teen romance where the star quarterback asks you to The Dance, and afterward takes you behind the bleachers and hikes your dress up and, you know, makes you a woman?”

“I don’t know. Wouldn’t that be nice? To get asked to The Dance by someone you really liked?”

“Please. The only teen movie I want to be in is  _ The Virgin Suicides _ .”

“Are you really…?”

“A virgin? Yes. And I can’t drive.”

“Same,” says Jisu. “Although I guess I’ve had some practice.”

“With which?”

“I’ll let you decide….”

They’re silent for a moment while they listen to the rippling of distant fish. And then without warning Yeji kisses Jisu on the cheek and says, “At least we’re away from everyone together.”

And they decide it’s become too cold and clamber out of the pool and grab their clothes and sprint back up the path, dust clinging to their naked skin like so many ticks, and then creep past Yuna and into their beds, Jisu’s dripping hair flared around the pillow like a tiara.

Sleep comes easily. No dreams.

#

When Jisu wakes she rushes to the toilet down the hall to vomit, afterward stumbles back to bed. She shivers in the damp sheets, then nearly dies from heat under the blankets. 

Yeji appears at her bedside and puts the back of her hand to her forehead and says, “You’re burning up.”

“I think I’m dying.”

“I’ll bring you some water. And soup.”

“At least I get to be hotter than you for a bit.”

“It’s weird. I remember when I was here as a little kid, I also got sick the day after I went swimming. Maybe there’s something in the water.”

“The betrayal….”

Yeji brings her a bowl of broth and a Tylenol, and she forces both down her throat, and after some prompting she manages to sip mouselike from a glass of water. Yeji leaves her there alone — “Ryujin’s making us practice the dance” — and she slips in and out of high-contrast dreams for the rest of the day, pausing only to throw up the broth and then her bile.

In her dreams she is back in her old high school, except half of the students are extras from  _ Clueless _ . And her best friend has Yeji’s perfect face and Alicia Silverstone’s perfect body. They go to a mall. They go to a house-party. They have a sleepover in her gaudy Beverly Hills McMansion. 

And as the sun outside begins to dive behind the mountain, they kiss, and the credits scroll across their faces. Except the credits aren’t names but her worst fears. _Starring: You Will Never Have This_ _… Directed by: You Aren’t Good Enough_.

At some point Yeji — the real Yeji — pulls her from sleep. All around them is the acrid scent of sweat. Both are drenched in it. There’s barely any light left. 

“Are you feeling better?” asks Yeji.

“Marginally. I’d be dead without you.” 

“It’s the least I could do. I made you drink from the poison well. And I lied to you.”

“What did you lie about?”

“I didn’t really go down to that little pool with my friends. I really went to a summer camp up here, but I didn’t exactly have my friends. But there was this one girl. Her name was Yeong-mi, and she had this long dark hair and the biggest eyes I’d ever seen. She was so beautiful. And one night she woke me up and said, ‘Come with me,’ and of course I did. She took me down there. We took off all our clothes and jumped in. And she kissed me.

“That’s when I heard them. All the other girls, hidden behind the spindly trees, going, ‘Oh my god! She really kissed a girl! Naked! So gross!’ And Yeong-mi also laughed, and she climbed out of the water and ran back to the cabin with the rest of them. But I couldn’t move. I floated there in the icy water. The sun was up when I managed to get out. And when I got back I had the worst cold of my life.”

“Yeji … I’m so sorry.”

“It was a long time ago. Damn you really are hotter than me. How do you look so good when you’re half-dead? I’d kiss you if you weren’t contagious.”

And she goes to her own bed and doesn’t say another word. Jisu closes her eyes and sees nothing but black until the sun rises in the morning.

#

The next day it’s like magic — there isn’t any indication that Jisu was sick at all. Her color is back. She can breathe. The only heat comes down from the sun like a vapor. 

She eats a breakfast of oats and condensed milk with the rest of them, and Ryujin says, “So you decided to quit faking?”

“She wasn’t faking,” says Yeji.

“You have a lot to catch up on,” says Chaeryeong. 

“You’re still an amateur,” says Yuna.

After breakfast they step out onto the wooden deck and they take turns showing Jisu the new moves. There is dance and then there is The Dance. Dance as she has come to understand it is forcing yourself into a rigid mould, where any wrong flesh is shorn off with a knife. Where to misstep is to die. To lose.

But The Dance — at least in her imagination — is the smell of the gymnasium and too much cologne. It is twisting uncontrollably to the pop song you’ve always hated, but now, in the neon and dimness, seems so true, so real. It is smuggled vodka behind the stage and a sloppy first kiss. It is true love.

They’re at it all day, and all day Yeji is in her periphery. All day she can’t get the image of Yeji kissing Yeong-mi in the moonlight out of her head. She can’t forget the smell of her sweat, the sight of her nude body shimmering with wetness.

The earth seems to rotate around her, without her. Golden light becomes a murky smoke and finally is gone. On the ancient TV that night is another sentimental coming-of-age thing. She can’t focus on it. 

Finally the sky is black and they’re in their dim room together. Jisu picks at her fingernails, until finally working up the courage to say, “Yeji, I think I really like you.”

“I think I really like you, too.”

“Oh. Good. So … what now?”

“Do you want me to ask you to The Dance?”

“You aren’t the star quarterback, but I guess you’ll do.”

“I’d be honored, Jisu.”

“I have an idea,” she says, and she darts into the meagre closet where she’s stashed her duffel bag of clothes, and she rummages until she finds her long blue sleeveless ball gown with the low neckline, and she slides the closet door closed and changes into it. 

When she comes out Yeji makes her mouth like a squashed O. “Why the hell did you bring that?”

“Just in case. Will you do the zipper?”

“Just in case. Okay.” And she lifts Jisu’s long dark hair out of the way and zips up the back of the dress. 

And the room is dark but not too dark, and the moon hangs in the sky like a disco ball, and Yeji puts her hands on either side of Jisu’s waist, and the touch makes her shudder, and she drapes her arms over Yeji’s shoulder. They begin to sway to the rhythm of their heartbeats.

“Does my breath still smell like vomit?” asks Jisu.

“Let me check,” says Yeji, and she leans in and kisses her on the mouth. “No. Your breath smells nice. I really wanted to do that. Sorry.”

“It’s okay. It’s like I always imagined.”

“Your lips taste better than Yeong-mi’s.”

And they kiss again, and Yeji laces her fingers through Jisu’s hair, and they tumble onto Jisu’s bed, which still smells of fever sweat. Her hands trace the length of Yeji’s neck, her back, her buttocks. Fire spreads across her thighs, and she wraps them around Yeji’s hips. 

Yeji pushes the frilly mess of Jisu’s dress up her thin legs and through the thin cloth they make eye contact and Yeji says, “Can I?” And Jisu nods. Her eyes are wide and her face is red, completely red.

Yeji’s hand moves under her dress, slides across her groin, and Jisu gasps. And then her fingers slip under the elastic of her underwear and find her sticky and slippery and swollen. The first touch is like a static shock, and now it’s more a sigh than a gasp, and Yeji leans forward and licks her neck and nibbles the lobe of her ear, and her hand goes up and down up and down, her hot palm brushing against Jisu’s swollen clitoris, and she moans into Yeji’s shoulder. 

It’s like nothing else. It’s wholly un-Hollywood. And yet the feeling in her gut is like a million romantic dramas at once. They are not just close but all the way together, all of them, their past, present, and future selves. This is it. This interplay of limbs and digits is The Dance.

When she climaxes she squeezes her arms around Yeji’s body so hard she’s worried she’ll suffocate. There isn’t a lot of air up here. And when the tension leaves she finds herself panting, and Yeji says into her ear breathlessly, “I don’t think we’re amateurs anymore.”


End file.
